IAN BERRY MATERIAL WORLD
TEXTILE MUSEET | SWEDEN
OVERVIEW
Look around Ian Berry’s first major Museum Exhibition in Sweden at Textil Museet, the National Museum of Textiles in Sweden
Ian Berry x Jonathan Christopher
To mark the Museum show, Ian Berry collaborated with Dutch Designer Jonathan Christopher to make garments linked to Berry’s collections.
Ian Berry x TWOOD
Denim remade into wood. Yes, amazing. Not only that TWOOD has made it into a guitar and Drum kit to coincide with Ian Berry’s body of work.
Denim became big from its rural origins, music helped this egalitarian material became a major fabric in urban centres. Some may say too big?
Ian Berry’s most recent project asks visitors, ‘who is your Denim Legend?’ and their opinions can shape the final piece that hangs at Textil Museet.
See Ian Berry’s remade lockdown Living Room with his Chesterfield, records, plants and rugs all made of denim where he spent his time in isolation.
With Thanks
Tonello - CONE Denim - TWOOD - Jonathan Christopher - Hayden Kays
Textil Museet - Henry Wong - AGI Denim - PG DENIM - CATTO
..and all the clients that have loaned their to the exhibition.
ABOUT
Ian Berry returned to Sweden, the country he lived for 5 years to open the solo exhibition Material World at Textil Museet in Borås Sweden - the National Museum of Textiles and the Nordic region’s leading museum on the subject. Ian Berry’s specific medium is denim and the famous industrial city also has a textile and denim heritage.
Textil Museet shows some of Berry’s most well-known pieces never seen in Sweden before -large (denim) ‘canvases’, made with layers of recycled jeans, creating photorealistic yet often melancholy scenes out of the indigo fabric.
To celebrate showing a large collection of his works at Textil Museet Ian Berry has collaborated with Dutch fashion designer Jonathan Christopher to create garments inspired by his most notable bodies of work; Behind Closed Doors, Hotel California and the Secret Garden installation, that will debut at the museum.
The Secret Garden installation touches on subjects such as sustainability and the environment, showing this material made from plants turning back into plants, with hanging wisteria, flowers and vines falling from the institution’s ceiling. Sustainability is also at the core of Ian Berry’s friend Lill O.Sjöberg’s innovation. Making denim wood, Twood, is the Swedish designer’s latest innovation and the pair have come together to make some special pieces to exhibit to compliment Ian Berry’s archive of work - visitors can view a guitar and drum kit, made of only TWOOD!
Ian Berry Needs You!
Ian Berry is asking, who is your favourite Denim Legend?
It could be from the cowboy actors, 50’s rebels, the punks of the 70’s to the influencers of today. Who inspired your denim looks or who do you feel had the biggest impact on denim? Over the last year he has been asking this question, and using his wealth of knowledge from working with the material over the last 15 years has already created dozens of portraits from Brooke Shields to Bardot, Marley to Moss, McQueen to the material girl living in her material world -Madonna. As he creates one of his largest works he wants the audience to help shape it. It may even mean some of the portraits already made will get rejected so the piece will form the greatest influences from Pop Culture, making the Denim Legends.
These portraits are exhibited in an area where visitors can submit their choices and the portraits will grow over the exhibition - you can play a part in shaping it!
“Ian Berry’s work is interesting and important on so many levels. There’s the ‘wow’ factor of the craft, the thematics, and the way in which his art shows how the textile material forms yet another dimension in art”,
Malena Karlsson, Curator at the Textile Museum of Sweden, says.
Ian Berry appeared on the ‘30 Under 30’ list of the most influential artists in the world, has exhibited his work in both the USA and Europe, and is considered to be one of the 50 most influential people connected to the Jeans Industry. The Textile Museum of Sweden is happy to announce that the work of the artist known for his work with only denim jeans, Ian Berry will be exhibited at the Textile Museum of Sweden this autumn!
It’s not a photograph, it's jeans!
At first sight, it is easy to mistake Berry’s work for blue- or indigo-tinted photographs, but a closer look reveals that they are made up of layer upon layer of denim in different shades. The contrasts between the different shades of blue visible in a pile of old jeans were the genesis of Berry’s unique art form. Soon, he began to explore the possibilities offered by the material and create photorealistic artworks. Berry only uses upcycled denim in his works. No colouring agents or bleach are used – only scissors, glue, and second-hand jeans.
When working with denim he began to understand the significance of his own and others’ relationship with the material, which is one that we are all very familiar with. Ian is of the opinion that the fact that that denim is highly recognisable opens doors to understanding and identification. His works reflect on contemporary events and phenomena but also refer back to the cultural history of jeans.
Ian Berry quickly became one of the most talked-about young artists, Art Business News listed him as one of the most influential artists in the world by including him in their ‘30 Under 30’ list in 2013 and In 2019, he was recognised by the denim magazine Rivet as one of the 50 most influential people in the denim industry.
Berry was born and raised in Huddersfield, England, which like Borås has a long-standing textile tradition. Ten years ago Ian moved to Sweden and exhibited his art at galleries in Skåne and Motala. Since then his art has been exhibited all over the world, most recently at Museum Rijswijk in the Netherlands and in Genoa, the Italian city that leant its name to this favourite garment, jeans. The Textile Museum of Sweden is the first Swedish museum to exhibit a large, in-depth exhibition of Ian Berry’s works.
TEXTIL MUSEET
til 1 May 2022
Skaraborgsvägen 3, 506 30 Borås, Sweden